Global warming, global weirding, or what?

By
Capital Weather Gang

A slide (slide 3) from a presentation delivered by President Obama's science advisor, John Holdren on September 6, 2010.

White House science advisor John Holdren made news when, in a recent presentation, he recommended describing the changes occurring to the Earth's climate as "global climate disruption" as opposed to "global warming." Holdren referred to the term global warming as a "(dangerous) misnomer" (for reasons stated in the slide to the right).

For years, scientists, politicians, and journalists - not to mention the public - have wrestled with how to frame or brand what's happening with the planet's climate...

* In 2003, political consultant Frank Luntz advised the Bush administration to use the term "climate change" instead of "global warming". Luntz wrote: "Climate change" is less frightening than "global warming"[original emphasis]. As one focus group participant noted, climate change 'sounds like you're going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.' While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.

* In his 2005 "On Language" column (August), the NY Times' William Safire discussed different perspectives on the use of climate change and global warming, and concluded: "In the nomenclature struggle, who names an issue usually carries the day. Lexicographers and usagists take no sides, but as reflected by the search engines, the neutral climate change has put a chill into the scarier global warming."

* In 2005 (October), the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) stated: the phrase 'climate change' is growing in preferred use to 'global warming' because it helps convey that there are [other] changes in addition to rising temperatures. The U.S. EPA cites this statement on its "climate change" website, providing definitions of both climate change and global warming.

* In 2010, NY Times columnist Tom Friedman weighed in on the issue: Avoid the term "global warming." I prefer the term "global weirding," because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and the climate changes. The weather gets weird. The hots are expected to get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent storms more numerous. In response, progressive climate blogger Joe Romm discussed the range of terminology options, and then confessed: Frankly, I don't care what term you use as long as you talk about what's happening and the science behind it.

So do you agree with the NAS (climate change), Friedman (global weirding), Holdren (global climate disruption), prefer global warming or another term (feel free to suggest in comments), or, like Joe Romm, do you not care? Vote in the poll below...

Please. The planet's climate is not static. It is dynamic. The planet's climate is being it's normal, non-static, dynamic self. Control freaks can't call it Global Warming anymore because it isn't warming. So now you'll call it Global Disruption, rather than the accurate Natural Global Climate Dynamism.

They should describe the changes happening to are Earth's climate as the "Oil Change."

Or better yet, they should call it the natural rapture cycle.

The New York Times ran an article about the American Petroleum Institute in April of 1998. It outlines a very specific and detailed plan by oil and gas industry representatives to invest millions of dollars in an effort to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol and discredit the scientific consensus opinion that greenhouse gases are causing the planet to warm.

The draft plan, titled “Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan,” concedes that opposition to the protocol is not shared by the public or a vast majority of scientists worldwide. “There has been little, if any, public resistance or pressure applied to Congress to reject the treaty, except by those ‘inside the Beltway’ with vested interests,” it notes.

The New York Times reported that according to the document, a key component of the plan would be to “maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media, and other key audiences.” To do this, they would “recruit a cadre of scientists who share the industry’s views of climate science and to train them in public relations so they can help convince journalists, politicians and the public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify controls on greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that trap the sun’s heat.

Furthermore, The Republican Party is inundated with science haters because free-market fundamentalism and religious fundamentalism go hand in hand. It wasn't a big leap to make the switch from defending a 6000 year old earth to defending crackpot theories about climate.

The common thread between free market fundamentalism and Christian fundamentalism stood out like a sore thumb in America's 2004 national election.
The American National Exit Poll (NEP) of 2004 included a measure of evangelical identification. Voters were asked the following question:

"Would you describe yourself as a born-again or evangelical Christian?"

[Yes, No]

Of those who answered Yes, 79% voted for Bush.

It's too bad voters weren't asked, "Would you describe yourself as a born-again or evangelical Christian who is also a white Protestant, a young-earth creationist, and a global warming denier?" [Yes, No].
If they had, I am sure that number would be close to 100%.

How about "Global Climate Extremism"? What we should be seeing, in the short term is, as columnist Tom Friedman states, are greater variations in the normal dynamics of weather and climate, while in the longer term, rising temperatures that will continually affect those dynamics?

On the other hand, maybe the use of such a term would somehow sound too political to some people. Those who believe that climate is changing might be tempted to say, "Extremism in the control of climate change/global warming/global weirding is no vice", while those non-believers might say "Extremism in denying that climate change/global warming/global weirding is no vice" (shades of old Barry Goldwater).

What matters is that we're polluting the planet, and we need to stop. How will we mitigate the damage we've done and how can we avoid doing more damage? That's what I care about. The rest, frankly, is all semantics. Although this heat wave and full-on sun, and it's already late September, well, it's getting real old real fast.

I said "other", fossil carbon phobia. Normally a mild and normal reaction that everyone should have when using smelly and nasty sources of energy like gasoline. I know I don't like spilling it on me or having to keep it around.

But "extremism" is a good way to depict how people have taken it too much too far. Looking at every weather event as a new Armageddon and pronouncing doom with every new run of the climate models. I believe it is unhealthy to be obsessed over climate theory.

The 'warmest year ever' campaign will probably not make it to the end of the year. Satellite records don't agree with the propaganda sources, and without phony arctic temperatures even the propaganda source can't make it happen. Colder is more likely than warmer for the next thirty years or so, and that just might mean the end of the gravy train for some CAGW advocates who only pretend to be scientists. Real scientists study the data and try to understand what it means; CAGW advocates cherry pick and manipulate the data to attempt to prove what they already believe.

I go for Climate Change. However, in reality it's a difficult question to answer.

The first fundamental issue is how one defines climate. The Climate Prediction Center (CPC) defines climate as, "the average of weather (e,g, temperature, moisture, cloudiness, frequency of tropical cyclones, etc.) over at least a 30-year period". Critically it adds that "climate taken over different periods of time (30 years, 1000 years) may be different".

The second basic issue is what and how this or that in the climate average is changing. According to CPC, climate change refers to a "non-random change in the climate mean that is measured over several decades or longer" - that is, a systematic trend in the climate mean (increasing, decreasing, etc.).

Note too that climate change also includes the shorter term (shorter than climate averaging period) variability about the climate mean. Hence, the climate mean need not necessarily be changing if extremes in variability about the mean increase and cancel one another out (e.g., extreme heat/cold). On the other hand, there can be a trend in the climate mean, but without necessarily having accentuation of extremes.

Of course both the mean and variability could be changing. But again, whatever the manifestation of climate change depends critically upon the length of the period over which the climate is defined!

So, as posed the question raised is highly ambiguous in regard to not describing the length of the averaging period over which changes are presumably occurring to the Earth's climate.

Although I do agree that "global climate disruption" is a better term than "global warming," unfortunately I don't have much faith that any particular terminology will be as effective as it should.

Why not? The cult of the "skeptic," by which I mean those who dress themselves in the cloak of "uncertainty" and "lack of consensus" and seize upon any minority outliers as "proof" of their position, will just say, "See, you're moving the goalposts AGAIN!" or some similar snarky comment.

"Another failure of the solar-forcing theory is the fact that the stratosphere - the layer of air above the troposphere where most weather takes place - has been cooling since about 1950. This is a predicted result of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases along with declines in the amount of ozone in the stratosphere (remember the ozone layer problem?). If increases in solar luminosity were the main cause of the warming climate, then the troposphere and stratosphere should warm together."

Seems to me this reflects an important point that tends to be overlooked in these discussions: Whether global temperatures are rising depends on how you define "global."

If by "global" we mean the Earth and its atmosphere, then skeptics are perfectly right, as I understand it: There is no global warming. The Earth still receives and radiates the same amount of energy.

Instead, what's actually happening as a result of greenhouse gases is that the thermal gradient of the atmosphere is changing: It's getting warmer near the surface; cooler in the upper atmosphere.

Of course, the surface is where we live, and it's the impact of rising temperatures near the surface, as well as the other climate changes brought about by the shifting thermal gradient, that is the primary concern.

If people who are concerned with climate change and its causes and consequences made this distinction clear more often, we wouldn't leave ourselves quite so open to the skeptics' charge that "global warming is a myth." The idea that the temperature gradient is shifting is a little more sophisticated than the simple "greenhouse" analogy, but not that hard for people to grasp. Failure to explain it just causes confusion. And it would be easier to rebut the solar-forcing theory, as in the excerpt above.

pardon, but i don't think it's about increasing the thermal gradient (though that may be happening). it's my understanding that increased co2 in the atmosphere is trapping more of the heat that otherwise would escape out to space.

so, the entire earth as a whole is warming - that's the theory, right scientist-types? AGW implies (or comes right out and says) the earth's "energy balance" is trending towards warmer. it's not just a case of redistributing trapped heat, it's trapping more heat....right?

Hi Walter. It depends on what you are trying to label. Are you labeling manmade warming from increased CO2? Then that is pretty easy, it is 5.35 ln(C/C0) which with C at 390 and C0 at 280 is 1.77 W/m2 in energy (forcing) increase. The Plank response (I skipped this step in last week's myths post) is about 0.3 C per W/m2 of forcing or 0.53 C temperature rise from CO2 alone so far. That is global warming since it is calculated globally from global values with little controversy.

The next thing you might label is manmade warming plus natural water vapor feedback. That depends on sensitivity which is highly controversial. But even with a generously high lambda for sensitivity we get 0.8 times 1.77 or 1.4 C in global warming since preindustrial which some postulate is being stored in the oceans.

Lastly you might label the climate extremes that are supposedly due to the 0.53 or 1.4 C temperature rise. But it is really hard to prove that there are more extremes and that they are due to the CO2 warming plus water vapor feedback mainly because the water vapor feedback is reduced by the amount of the extremes (the unevenness in water vapor). So the 0.53 warming has to cause the extremes which doesn't seem likely since CO2 warms the poles, dry areas and at night so should lessen extremes on that basis.

Groff, Walter,
Adding greenhouse gases does cause the troposphere to warm and the stratosphere to cool, but the latter is much less dense so it is not just a matter of transferring heat. It is true that in equilibrium, Earth receives the same amount of solar radiation as ever and so must emit the same amount of infrared radiation back to space. However, because of the optical thickness of the greenhouse gases, the effective source height of this radiation to space is higher in the troposphere when there are more greenhouse gases. But the tropospheric temperature decreases with height and lower temperature air radiates with less energy, so to keep the same amount of energy radiating to space, more greenhouse gases must entail a warmer troposphere.

I guess I'm inclined to give up on the issue and become a survivalist. Everything that people need to know is right in front of you, but an insurmountably large part of the public continues to refuse to hear the evidence and prefers to take solace in some idiot fantasy in which there are climate scientists becoming wealthy by lying to the public about climate change. When the water is lapping at your door and the alligators are eating your poodles, you'll keep arguing that the science is not "all in." I am confident, at this point, in the notion that there won't be a runaway greenhouse effect and all that will happen will be a roughly 50% decrease in the world's carrying capacity for humanity (I'm sure that number is wrong in detail, but why split hairs? Anything worse than a few percent decrease in capacity will have gigantic effects), resulting in widespread famine and war. I am planning accordingly, for myself and for my progeny. The one thing in which I can take solace is the thought that this particular extinction event will preferentially kill stupid people. Evolution at work!

The true vote is for Natural Climate Cycles. Tree rings, ice-depth analysis, and many other pieces of evidence all prove that natural climate-change was going on long before humans brought the carbon-burning Industrial Age along, or even before they were a major force on the planet, period. To blame all this on burning fossil-fuels and a so-called "Greenhouse Effect" is simply absurd. In that respect, the groups most opposed to Al Gore & Co. (and even people on this forum like Mr. Q and ecocampaigner) are correct.

Although NOAA data tend to support greenhouse gas induced global warming, one or two well-timed volcanic events could offset any warming which is occurring. What seems to be known is that incoming solar radiation is more or less constant.

KPosty,
bbbrrrr.... summer was the "coldest in decades" in SoCal! no kidding?! wow...congrats. you found a place where it was colder than average this summer. are you posting that info to "balance" all the global warming hoo-ha?

GLOBALLY, this was the warmest june/july/august on record, and this has been the warmest year-to-date on record... but don't let facts temper your outrage.

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Global Highlights

* The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for August 2010 was the third warmest on record at 16.2°C (61.2°F), which is 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 15.6°C (60.1°F). August 1998 is the warmest August on record and 2009 is the second warmest.
* The August worldwide land surface temperature was 0.90°C (1.62°F) above the 20th century average of 13.8°C (56.9°F)—the second warmest August on record, behind 1998.
* The worldwide ocean surface temperature was 0.50°C (0.90°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.4°F) and tied with 1997 as the sixth warmest August on record.
* The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for June–August 2010 was the second warmest on record, behind 1998, at 16.2°C (61.3°F), which is 0.64°C (1.15°F) above the 20th century average of 15.6°C (60.1°F).
* The June–August worldwide land surface temperature was 1.00°C (1.80°F) above the 20th century average of 13.8°C (56.9°F)—the warmest June–August on record, surpassing the previous June–August record anomaly of 0.92°C (1.66°F) set in 1998.
* The worldwide ocean surface temperature was 0.51°C (0.92°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F) and was the fifth warmest June–August on record.
* For January–August 2010, the global combined land and ocean surface temperature of 14.7°C (58.5°F) tied with 1998 as the warmest January–August period on record. This value is 0.67°C (1.21°F) above the 20th century average.

and, if you go back to the june analysis, you'll see that june was the 304th consecutive month with warmer-than-the-20th-century-average temps. july and august continued that trend. so, the last time the GLOBE had a cooler-than-average month was 306 months ago, in feb. of 1985....when ronald reagan was president...

so, you're entitled to your opinions, but to maintain your current state of denial, be sure to stay away inconvenient global-scale facts.

MMCarhelp,
i don't think any serious scientist thinks that global temps have not fluctuated before. in fact most would say the earth is currently in an ice age. there have been plenty of times in earth's history when there were no ice caps. the difference between this time and other instances of warming is that this is the first warming caused by humans.

now, it's one thing to say this warming is no big deal and we'll adapt or whatever, but it's plain denialism to 1) think that the earth is not warming, and/or 2)think we're not causing the recent warming.

A rose by any other name... The warmists are unhappy with the lack of warming this century and are playing a word game here to deceive the public. If you have half a brain you will realize that it is warming they mean when they talk of "keeping the global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius." And how do they propose to do it? Quite simple: by reducing CO2 emissions. That sounds innocuous enough until you find out that it means destroying our civilization in the name of fighting an imaginary danger. The so-called "anthropogenic global warming" has never been observed, despite what James Hansen testified to in front of the Senate in 1988. I have demonstrated that the warming he spoke of was fake and that real warming did not start until 1998, ten years after he spoke, and had nothing to do with the greenhouse effect. It had an oceanic origin and was started by a super El Nino that interrupted the ENSO oscillations that preceded it. It was a step-wise warming and raised global temperature by a third of a degree in only four years. After which it stabilized as the twenty-first century high and temperature did not rise again after that. But all the IPCC climate models predicted warming for that period and all were wrong. Next thing a La Nina appeared in 2008, lowered the temperature and freaked them out even more as Kevin Trenberth's Climategate email testifies. But this La Nina was no mystery to me because I had already predicted a return to the oscillating climate of the eighties and nineties. That is what we had in place of the fake warming of Hansen that gave the global warming craze its real start. This kind of climate oscillation has been with us since the Panamanian seaway closed and is guaranteed to continue indefinitely. It consists of alternating warm El Nino peaks separated by cool La Nina valleys. The 2008 La Nina was followed by the 2010 El Nino and the next La Nina is already on the way. There is no anthropogenic global warming in our future, just natural climate vagaries we have always lived with. To extract money from us, to change entire industries and to use arable land for biofuel production in the name of saving us from a climate catastrophe are crimes against humanity. Our leaders have been fooled into these criminal actions under false premises. Much damage has already been done. The only way to stop further damage is to repeal all laws that have been passed in the name of "mitigating" global warming and climate change. For the full story of climate deception read: http://www.amazon.com/What-Warming-Satellite-global-temperature/dp/1439264708/ref=sr_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285262064&sr=8-1

Environmental factors responsible for the global climate are constantly changing on all levels of temporal and spatial scales. They always have and always will. The current global climate is simply doing what it is designed to do...attempt to achieve a balance of energy across the planet. Thankfully for Life on the planet, that balance will never be achieved. Energy is not created or destroyed by our atmosphere, it is moved around, negative toward the equator and downward and positive toward the poles and upward.

There have been many cold, hot, wet, and dry periods throughout the history of the Earth. There will continue to be such extremes as the climate cycle keeps chugging along. Those extremes are what make up climate. It is rare to have "normal" weather. Normals are a mathematical baseline created to describe typical weather for an area. So periods of perceived "unusual" weather are typical, thus, the current global climate cycle is just doing what it normally does.

The planet has survived and thrived throughout these cycles and will continue to do so. There is no reason to panic; the Earth and its environmental cycles will be just fine and all forms of Life will adjust to the periods of climate extremes as it always has.

It does not matter what we call the change in the earth's climate, we must convince the flat earth society, creationists, tea partiers, and it seems too many of the rest of us, that something must be done now if we are to save all the cities, New Orleans is a great example, built on the worldwide coastal plain. If we don't do something now, millions upon millions of people will have to move inland and millions and millions of jobs will have to be found for them when they do move to altitudes that won't be necessarily higher anymore. The topography will not be able to support them. How will the Appalachians support such an increase in population? I have no idea. I will be dead before this all happens, but it intrigues me that so many are so willing to do nothing now to be ready for the future. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for 150 million years, but no one single species ruled for anywhere near that long a time. Humans are supposed to be different yet we are just one little subset of the Mammalian line. We will disappear quicker than most species because we can help that extinction along like no other species before us. And we are doing just that by ignoring the environmental changes that might inflict destruction on our species. Does it matter if the climate on our planet is changing? Of course it does. Does it matter if we do anything about it? Of course it doesn't. The human race will just have to live with what the Earth wills to us. Unfortunately, for our species, too many of us are not willing to do anything to help our species survive. So if that's the way we as a group want it, then let's just sit back and see what happens. I fear that as a species we are no smarter than any other, except when it comes to being so selfish. And nature's brutishness will certainly overwhelm humanity's selfishness. Homo sapiens is just one of another hominid in the long evolutionary line. We may have greater intelligence but we do nothing to make the species line prosper for any length of time. Our only hope for longevity is to use our intelligence to work constantly for the betterment of the Earth. If we say 'do nothing', we are surely doomed. Right now, it looks like we have far too many people either unwilling or incapable of helping our species prosper. Does it matter if the climate is changing? Until, more of us who can make a difference quit being selfish, the climate will continue to change far more rapidly than what we can do to stop it. In the end, our species will decline and eventually disappear, more quickly than necessary because of our lack of will or desire to work with each other. That's too bad, because we are the first species to have the capacity to use our brains to improve our lot. Sadly, however, it looks like we are no different than any other species. Like every other species before us, we will let whatever happens happen. Selfish? You bet it is.

I suggest "climate chaos" - using chaos in the strict scientific meaning of the term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
A chaotic weather pattern would likely exhibit unpredictable swings from one extreme to another, in an increasingly rapid rate.

Chaos theory resulted from meteorological studies, so its use in this context has historical roots.

Whatever you think is the climate sensitivity to CO2 and likely global temp rise, it is indisputable that Carbon trading with its carbon offsets and the greenwash industry with the many subsidized energy schemes have been rorted on just massive scales.

Here in Australia the Orwellian language manipulation two other dimensions - how climate policies are described and justified:

First it was "Carbon Dioxide emission reduction"
Then "Carbon reduction"
Then "Carbon Pollution reduction"
Now its just "Pollution reduction"

Who could oppose pollution reduction, right?

And what have been the justifications for trillions of spending and 'de-industrialization' of our lives:

First - to avoid billions dying from CAGW - 20m sea rises
When the science became shaky....
Then to limit the temperature rise to 2 DegC
Then to avoid extremes of weather
Then for sustainability, peak oil, energy security
Then to catch the profits of the Green revolution
Then just to be green and socially just
Now its just for certainty for business because price on carbon is "inevitable".

You don't need to know anything about the science - just look at the manipulation and staggering dishonesty of their CAGW propaganda.

Posted by: michaelc58
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oh, man... that's classic. and in a completely different way than intended, it's true. and exxon, api, oil-state reps/sens propaganda is staggeringly... honest? hahahaha. yeah...burning oil's not the problem - of course not. it's like mcdonald's telling you their big mac is healthy for you... and that your waistline is stable, while your pants are actually getting smaller...